Under President Joe Biden , deep-pocketed nonprofit organizations allied with the Democratic Party have earned a key seat at the policy shaping table — staying in close contact with the government as it works to reverse Trump-era rules. All the while, leaders of many of these same groups have scored meetings with Vice President Kamala Harris, according to White House visitor logs.
Harris, now the presumptive 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, has hosted the leaders for meetings at her private residence and other locations, including the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, visitor logs show. The visitors include the likes of George Soros's son Alex Soros, Stephen B. Heintz of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and various heads of progressive groups linked to the Biden-Harris administration's policy agenda.
News of Harris's willingness to entertain the nonprofit heads, who have also attended meetings with Biden and top officials, such as John Podesta, with deep connections to the left-wing policy world, comes as Democrats seek to link Trump to outside groups on the Right with their own ambitions to influence policy. The Biden-turned-Harris campaign has made a foe of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, a coalition of conservative groups making suggestions to a potential next GOP administration. Democrats have baselessly alleged Trump's campaign is behind, or being influenced by, Project 2025, which the former president recently disavowed — whereas federal records suggest progressive special interests tangibly have the ears of Biden and Harris to shape policy.
"The breathless treatment of Project 2025 reveals the Left’s conceit now for half a century: conservatives, and their policy agenda, are presumptively illegitimate. All organizations on the Left to advance their policy agenda, including efforts very similar to Project 2025, are good, righteous, and just," said Ryan Williams, president of the Claremont Institute, a think tank involved in Project 2025.
Harris, who is polling an average of roughly 2 percentage points below Trump, has hosted the nonprofit leaders since 2021, visitor logs show.
Heintz, whose Rockefeller family-funded group is tied to a successful campaign to pressure Biden on halting new approvals for liquefied natural gas export terminals, had a one-on-one meeting with Harris in April 2021 in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, records show. Heinz, subsequently, would head to the White House on at least two more occasions, in July 2021 and September 2022, with the latter being for an event in which Rockefeller Brothers Fund-backed initiatives were "highlighted" by Biden at a summit, according to RBF.
RBF, which sits on over $1.3 billion in assets, funded an environmental project called Rewiring America that was linked to the Biden administration's heavily scrutinized proposal last year to ban gas stoves, tax forms show. Biden's campaign received donations in 2020 from RBF staffers, while the 2024 Biden-turned-Harris campaign in June pocketed a $1,000 check from an RBF foundation officer, campaign finance records show.
Alex Soros, who recently took control of his father's $25 billion empire backing progressive causes, is a frequent visitor to the Biden White House. In May of last year, Harris hosted the Open Society Foundations chairman along with top Democratic donors at her private residence, visitor logs show. Other OSF officials have also often met with Biden administration officials, and groups supported by the George Soros-backed philanthropy network have worked behind the scenes to shape Biden administration policies.
George Soros and Alex Soros, plus other Soros family members, have contributed large sums to campaign committees supporting Biden and Harris, according to campaign finance records .
Another Harris visitor, Lorella Praeli, is a former top campaign staffer for Hillary Clinton who is now co-president of Community Change. The group pressures Democrats to adopt progressive reforms and has an affiliated advocacy arm that Praeli leads. The advocacy arm touts on its website how it "played a pivotal role" in helping to get provisions passed in Biden's signature Inflation Reduction Act and American Rescue Plan Act.
Praeli visited the Biden White House almost 20 times between 2021 and 2024, according to White House visitor logs. She met with Harris in July 2021 with nine other total people and attended an August 2021 meeting with Biden, Harris, and Latino leaders, according to records.
Darren Walker, who is stepping down as president of the Ford Foundation in 2025, had a one-on-one meeting with Harris in April 2021. He attended an event on the White House South Lawn in April 2022 and, in October 2022, an event at Harris's private residence, according to White House visitor logs. The Ford Foundation, which has an endowment of $16 billion and has long been one of the most influential left-wing grantmakers, partners with the Biden-Harris administration on sweeping federal funding initiatives .
"It's a matter of public record that Darren has periodically attended events or meetings at the White House," Amanda Simon, a spokeswoman for the Ford Foundation, told the Washington Examiner.
Simon declined to comment on what was discussed at the meetings. Ford Foundation employees regularly donate to Biden, Harris, and other Democrats. The White House said in a July press release that the Ford Foundation joined other nonprofit groups and agencies in pouring tens of millions of dollars into technology programs.
Other nonprofit heads who are listed in records as visiting with Harris include Manish Bapna of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which reportedly maintains a close working relationship with the Biden-Harris administration, Maya Wiley of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Deborah Archer of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Daria Dawson of America Votes. Margaret Huang of the Southern Poverty Law Center was part of a group that visited the vice president's residence last year, according to White House visitor logs.
A spokesperson for America Votes denied to the Washington Examiner that Dawson visited the White House in December 2023, writing over email, "She may have RSVP’d to invitations, but she did not attend any events."
America Votes takes large checks from Soros, the Sixteen Thirty Fund dark money " heavyweight ," and it came under the spotlight this year for being listed as a participant in a meeting with the Biden administration to plan implementing an executive order on voter registration that conservative legal experts say is unconstitutional. Representatives from the Soros-backed Open Society Policy Center, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and other left-wing groups were also at the meeting, according to federal documents.
Spokesman Josh Mogerman for the National Resources Defense Council said that, like other groups, the environmental group regularly meets with "decision-makers at all levels of government." The NRDC has an office in China and numerous NRDC staffers in Beijing worked in the past as Chinese government officials, Fox News reported . Bapna, the NRDC president, was part of a large group that visited with Harris in December 2023 at the vice president's residence, records show, and is listed a total of 15 times in White House visitor logs since October 2021.
"We do not discuss the details of those private discussions, but we say the same thing to public officials as we do every day to the public about policy solutions to confront the climate crisis, make drinking water safe, and otherwise protect public health and the environment," Mogerman told the Washington Examiner.
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, an SPLC spokesperson said the group often meets with public officials "who are concerned about racial justice and advancing the human rights of all Americans."
The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project notably filed a lawsuit last year on behalf of a parental rights group against the Biden administration for allegedly coordinating with the SPLC on labeling parents as extremists for opposing progressive curricula in public schools. Huang, the SPLC president, reportedly touted in a 2021 meeting with donors that Biden administration officials had been "reaching out to solicit our expertise and our knowledge and information to help shape the policies that the new administration is adopting to counter the domestic terrorism threat."
"We share our research findings and express our opinion to policymakers about groups and organizations that threaten the personal freedom and public safety of Americans through attacks on specific communities and anti-government behavior," the SPLC spokesperson said of Huang's visit to the White House in 2023.
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The Open Society Foundations, RBF, Community Change, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and ACLU did not reply to requests for comment.
Harris's office did not reply to a request for comment.
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